Rapid genome resequencing of an atoxigenic strain of Aspergillus carbonarius
In microorganisms, Ion Torrent sequencing technology has been proved to be useful in whole-genome sequencing of bacterial genomes (5 Mbp). In our study, for the first time we used this technology to perform a resequencing approach in a whole fungal genome (36 Mbp), a non-ochratoxin A producing strain of Aspergillus carbonarius. Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a potent nephrotoxin which is found mainly in cereals and their products, but it also occurs in a variety of common foods and beverages. Due to the fact that this strain does not produce OTA, we focused some of the bioinformatics analyses in genes involved in OTA biosynthesis, using a reference genome of an OTA producing strain of the same species. This study revealed that in the atoxigenic strain there is a high accumulation of nonsense and missense mutations in several genes. Importantly, a two fold increase in gene mutation ratio was observed in PKS and NRPS encoding genes which are suggested to be involved in OTA biosynthesis. ; We thank P. Battilani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy) for kindly providing us the strain W-201 ( = A-1796 = ITEM 5010) used in this study. The sequence Aspergillus carbonarius ITEM 5010 v3 data used in this publication were generated by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science User Facility and is supported under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (Principal Investigator: Scott E. Baker). This research was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government (AGL2010-22182-C04-02). ; Peer reviewed